From 2024, the rules for entering universities will change

Reforms, in particular, will affect the Russian language exam

In 2024, the rules for admission to universities will be changed. In particular, for admission to engineering and other technical specialties, they want to exclude the Russian language from the list of mandatory USE. But there will be more physics and computer science in schools, say the authors of the initiative. And the results of the exam in Russian “will be taken into account.”

The head of the Ministry of Education and Science Valery Falkov spoke about the upcoming revolutionary changes in the admission campaign at a meeting on training personnel for the Russian aviation industry. “From 2024, we want to enroll in engineering specialties and directions only in mathematics, physics and computer science, and consider the Russian language as an additional one,” the minister said. Like, “the measure is quite revolutionary for universities,” but what to do …

A number of reasons pushed the educational departments to such a revolutionary decision. The President and the State Duma are loudly calling for the revival of the prestige and quality of engineering education as early as 2020. But, as the experience of the previous admissions campaign shows, the bias in the number of free places towards technical specialties (260,000 out of 560,000 state-funded places were given “for engineers”) does not solve the problem of “luring into techies.” But it only creates new difficulties, such as a drop in the entrance score and additional admissions for engineering specialties even in strong, but not top universities.

In addition, over the past year, losses in terms of technical specialists have greatly thinned out the ranks of IT specialists. According to various estimates, in 2022, about 100 thousand specialists in the field of “computer sciences” left the country. Although the data differ significantly, one thing is clear – there is a shortage, and it needs to be filled. And the ministry is no longer up to raising the level of sociability among programmers and moving away from the “one-sided” thinking of narrow computer specialists, which was fashionable to talk about two years ago. Priorities have changed.

To the problem of the lack of future engineers, another systemic hole was added, already in schools. Few people now take the exam in physics, preferring to write social science, biology and computer science as an additional subject (mathematics and Russian are mandatory exams). And while physics was the 4th most popular subject in 2021, according to the educational oversight agency, the gap is wide. 45.1% of graduates passed social sciences – only 16.8% took physics.

And, so, it turns out, thought and thought, and finally came up with. Take the Russian and cancel it – most of the pure “techies” are really at odds with it. At the same time, the result of the Unified State Examination in the Russian language, which has not yet disappeared from the school examination rules, is proposed to be taken into account by the commissions. By setting the passing bar for “physicists not lyricists” in the range of 24-36 points. Here it is not entirely clear what to do with those who do not choose the Russian language for passing the exam at all, if it is not mandatory. For the same future programmer, it is more logical to choose English …

Meanwhile, sources close to the departments say that these are not just words, not just another recommendation or letter. A draft order has already been prepared on the new rules for passing the exam in schools. In addition to the abolition of the obligatory Russian for future techies, there will still be quite drastic changes. And they will come to schools on September 1, 2023.

– I have been working at school for a long time, – says Galina Panova, a teacher of Russian language and literature from Moscow. – I found various campaigns to increase the prestige or importance of a particular subject. And I know one thing – prohibitions or recommendations will not help here, it is necessary to create opportunities. So that the children themselves are interested and go to study, the same physics, for example.

Now with regard to the exam in my subject. In practice, I do encounter students who have a mathematical mindset. And they write very badly, they don’t want, they don’t have the desire to study literature or the Russian language. Words from essays reduce or try to pass essays consisting of three sentences. Ask such a student: “Why?” “I don’t need, I’m not interested, I already wrote everything.” Sometimes even, by analogy with “innate literacy”, there is the same illiteracy from nature, alas. Personally, I try to find an approach to such students, looking for compromise solutions. Up to the point that as a summer reading I ask you to evaluate science fiction, “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” from a technical, scientific point of view. I also know colleagues in the subject who do not make any discounts for “techies”. This is incorrect, in my opinion.

I do not agree with those who say that when the Unified State Examination in the Russian language is withdrawn from the list of compulsory subjects for admission to technical specialties, engineers will be illiterate in our country. Firstly, admission to the exam is an essay and no one cancels it and is not going to. Everyone will write, everyone learns to compose and analyze texts. Secondly, as far as I understand, it is necessary to solve the problem with the shortage of personnel now. And over time, perhaps, the Russian language in the control and measuring materials will be divided into basic and specialized, as they did with mathematics. And such proposals were made. Nevertheless, Russian is so rich in exceptions, figurative means of expression, metaphorical connections, and so on, that it is difficult for a person with precise systems thinking to fully comprehend. Maybe you don’t need to torture them. But the basic level, understanding of the native language, the foundations of literary reading, the school is obliged to give and instill.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28966 dated February 7, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Russian language allowed to be taken into account